Hamish roars to his feet. “Termination? You bleedin’ fart-hole, bugger off afore I dig you a extra arse with the point of my boot!”
Letkow retreats a step, looks pleadingly for support to Arthur, who steps between them, slowing Hamish’s advance but not his tongue: “I get through wit’ you, b’y, you scrawny, pompous, two-bit civil servant, won’t be enough of you to pray over!”
Letkow backs up a few more feet, bumping into an empty table, knocking over a chair.
Hamish tries to pursue, but Arthur has a fistful of his wool sweater. “You touch me dog, I’ll beat the livin’ Jaysus out of you and serve up your nuts to her for breakfast.”
Letkow has made it to the exterior steps, and is on his phone, presumably calling 911.
Finally, Hamish’s mates help Arthur wrestle the fiery little sculptor back to their table, but he continues to shout at the defeated, retreating foe: “Get off me island, you fart-mouth chucklehead.”
As Letkow escapes out to the parking lot, Hamish turns to Arthur: “Promise me, counsellor, you ain’t gonna let that stun barnacle terminate me dog.”
“You have my word.” He urges Hamish to go home and keep Shannon restrained. He will be available for further consultation tomorrow after church service.
“Okay, b’y, but I ain’t no churchgoer.” His temper much soothed, Hamish tosses back his Jameson’s and heads down to his truck.
Arthur has qualms about taking on such a difficult client, but it seemed the swiftest way to cool him out.
* * *
On leaving the store, shopping done, Arthur again stops at the bulletin board, oddly troubled by a question that somehow demands contemplation, as if deep and philosophical: “Has Any One Seen Fluffy?”
4
Sunday, February 24
Saturday’s sun has given birth to the mists of Sunday, and at ten o’clock they are so thick that Arthur can barely see homely little St. Mary’s Church from its lower driveway. There are forms in this mist, and irate human sounds that rise above the grunts of his Fargo.
Soon, he makes out that a score of the faithful are gathered around Reverend Al Noggins on the grass out front; he is engaged in loud debate with someone.
Arthur isn’t inclined to believe a rebellion is brewing against the country pastor. More likely the issue has to do with the discovery late yesterday, in Gwendolyn Park, of the bloody carcass of a feral goat. What manner of dog would have the agility and hunting skills to take down a wild goat among the park’s crags and steep declines? Even a hungry wolf would hesitate — and there’ve been no wolves on Garibaldi since pioneer days.
Arthur decides to park away from the action, by the path to the cemetery, in case he is called upon to spirit Al away from this seemingly unruly demonstration. Unruly because of the string of loud and profane epithets that rend the air.
But it turns out to be a one-man demonstration, its provocateur low to the ground, unseen above the surrounding heads and shoulders. The deep, gravelly, Irish-accented voice easily identifies the rowdy sculptor.
From what Arthur can make out, Shannon was dognapped during the night by the fart-mouth chucklehead with the aid of Constable Dugald, and is in the RCMP pound. Reverend Al tries in vain to subdue the grizzled elf, while Zoë tries to subdue Al. He shouts something about McCoy profaning this holy ground. That sets Hamish off.
“Lard thunderin’ Jaysus, I don’t give a damn we’re on holy ground! There’ll be holy hell to pay if they put Shannon down! I want me lawyer! Where’s me lawyer? He promised to be here!”
Al sees Arthur emerge from the greyness. “I shall ask God to deliver him to you.”
On cue, Arthur says, “I believe Shannon is innocent.”
That causes Hamish to turn a half-circle, to find that God has apparently delivered. “You’re damn tooting, counsellor.” He turns to address the wider jury. “My Shannon ain’t no killer. And me lawyer’s gonna prove that. And he’s gonna sue the dorty cops who done this, for false arrest and slander of me dog. Ain’tcha, Arthur?”
To Arthur’s gratitude, Al seeks to head off that dire prospect: “No need to bother Arthur with this.” He pulls out his phone. “I shall go directly to the top. And to help me get my message heard, Hamish, I’ll need you to join everyone inside to pray for Shannon’s safety.”
McCoy looks incredulous. “If you ain’t noticed, me ol’ cock, Hamish McCoy don’t do church, don’t have time for all the folderol, don’t credit your biblical fairy stories. I’se a full-time practising atheist, and proud of it.”
“Our Lord may have infinite patience with stubborn mules, Hamish, but in my weakness I do not. This is the deal. You go inside and join in prayer for the release of our beloved sister Shannon, or you cannot expect intervention, divine or otherwise.”
“Balderdash!” McCoy begins to sputter, out of words.
“What have you got to lose?” says Zoë Noggins, gently taking his arm.
Zoë and the parishioners somehow manage to get Hamish into the church, sort of carrying him, or at least lifting him off his feet, as he profanes and blasphemes. He doesn’t otherwise resist.
“Now what?” says Arthur. He has stayed outside with Al, who presses buttons on his old flip-top phone — either in an effort to reach the receptionist for the Lord Almighty or, more likely, someone far lower in the chain of command.
“Alas, Arthur, news travels slow among our small, ingrown islands. What goes on in the world’s remotest hot spots arrives faster. Anyway, this morning, Ned Bailey, over on Ponsonby — retired deacon, you may know him — called me to confirm . . . Just a minute.” Into his phone: “Hello, Irwin? Yes it’s Al Noggins. And how are you on this foggy Sunday morning?”
There follow a few moments of light chatter with Irwin Dugald, co-napper of Hamish’s dog. Inside, Zoë is at the piano, leading the assemblage into song: “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.”
“Very good, Irwin. And were you able to reach anyone from the Conservation Service? Ah, good, good. They looked at that paw print then?” A wink for Arthur. “First spotted on Ponsonby, Irwin, that’s what I heard this morning. Couple of messy deer kills. It must have swum over.”
A cougar, Arthur realizes. A mountain lion. Island dogs don’t kill goats, they don’t kill alpacas, and they don’t kill cats. Big cats kill little cats. Like Fluffy. Whose owner resides two miles north of here, where it’s sparsely populated.
“Okay, I shall spread the word. One more thing — Hamish is in a snit . . . Ah, very good, and he can just go down there and claim her?”
Al leads Arthur to the church door. “Wildlife Conservation Officers are on their way from Victoria. They say it’s likely a young male visiting from the big island. Well, let’s see if Hamish continues to reject the Saviour.”
Heads rise from prayer as they walk in. Hamish, in a back row, sits sternly, arms folded.
“Shannon is a free dog,” Al announces, ascending to the pulpit. “Let us thank the Lord for answering our prayers.”
Someone shouts a hallelujah. Hamish has the wary look of one who’s not sure if he’s being ribbed.
Thanks to those prayers, says Al, Constable Dugald has been shown the light: Shannon was wrongly accused, the perp is a cougar. “Our brother Hamish has the choice of running off to collect Shannon straight away or expressing his thanks by staying for the service.”
Hamish grumbles and shifts but doesn’t rise, and eventually smiles, cynically, knowing he’s been bested. “This better be good, b’y. Fill your boots.”
5
Wednesday, February 27
Arthur chooses the sturdiest of his collection of walking sticks — it’s made of hard, knobbly western yew and can double as a defensive weapon. When he steps outside Ulysses perks up his ears at the sight of familiar human friend with backpack and walking stick.
Arthur gives him a rub. “Sorry, old boy. You’re no longe
r a pup. You have a job now.” He kneels to Ulysses’s eye level, directs his attention to the livestock. “Your job is to protect the chickens, geese, goats, cats, and Barney over there.”
He points to their old horse, who chats with Stefan in the orchard. Stefan whistles to Ulysses, who gives up on old human, races off to join young human and grass-eating animal friend.
The weather is still pleasant this morning, as balmy as spring. Yet Arthur may well be the only Garibaldian hiking today. Islanders are sticking to their homes and cars as the cougar roams free.
A panic reaction has spread like a contagion on Garibaldi, though Arthur considers it overdone and illogical — the cougar is holed out in Gwendolyn National Park, well north of where the vast majority live. Mattie and Hamish are among only a few dozen farmers, artists, and hippies up there and they’re all staying put, sheltering their animals. A squad of Conservation Officers are there too, with their tranquilizer guns, hoping to trap, immobilize, and relocate the big cat far away from the encroaching human tide.
Arthur gets no more than three hundred metres up Potters Road when a neighbour comes by in his van and offers a lift. Arthur thanks him but spurns the offer.
“You heard about the lion?”
“Of course, Harvey.”
“An alpaca and a goat on the weekend, and now a couple of what used to be free-run chickens up at the Clegghornes’ near Bleak Creek.”
“I hadn’t heard that. Good Lord, the cougar must have been starving. Let’s hope its hunger is sated.”
“They say this animal is a killing machine. If it can take down a wild goat maybe you want to worry about your tame ones.”
“Ulysses comes from a long line of warrior dogs.”
“That big galoot? Could have fooled me.”
Were Arthur’s phone not ringing in his pocket he would have responded sharply to that unkind assessment. Instead, he lets Harvey drive off.
“How are you?” It’s Nancy Faulk, in Toronto.
“I’m quite well, my dear. I’m out on my ritual hike to the post office to pick up more of your depressing case law on the necessity defence.” Arthur wishes he hadn’t answered — she’s going to pester him: he’s not doing his homework, he’s needed in Toronto.
“So what did you think of Chernikoff’s analysis?”
“Chernikoff?”
“Crim law professor, Dalhousie. We gave him our set of facts.”
“I presume he says we’re facing desperate odds with our necessity defence. It’s what they all say.”
“So you haven’t read it.”
“It’s probably at the post office.”
“Which suggests you haven’t been collecting your mail.”
“This is not the city, Nancy. The mail comes by boat. You have to add an extra three or four days.”
“Wow. How nineteenth century.”
Arthur has scorned the new digital shortcuts, regards emailing as the work of the Devil, and defines an attachment as holding affection for another. His official excuse is that he doesn’t have a working printer and suffers an optical handicap that prevents him from reading from a screen. He is too proud to admit he is a total klutz with all but the most basic computer tasks.
“I’m going crazy here, Arthur. We’re heading into arbitration next week to see who gets the Toni Onley watercolour his mother gave us and the antique Swiss cuckoo clock he bought on my credit card. He’s claiming visiting rights to the fucking wine cellar because he can’t afford his own.”
Arthur sighs. “When do you absolutely need me to be there?”
“Yesterday.”
“We’re having a bit of an issue here with a mountain lion.”
“Oh, dear. Has it eaten anyone?”
“A few domestic animals.”
“Well, that’s terrible, Arthur. It puts into perspective the disappearing bees and the destruction of ecosystems and the very existence of life on this planet.”
Arthur endures the sting of her mockery for a few silent moments, waiting for her apology. It doesn’t come, so she obviously means business. He promises he will bury himself in the reports all week and be caught up by Saturday.
“Good, because I’m booking you a flight to Berlin for a week from now. You are to put your famous honeyed tongue to work on Dr. Dieter Hoff.”
De-Pollination: Why Chemistry May Kill Life on Earth, Hoff’s book, sits unopened in the den. A wintry trip overseas is not high on Arthur’s wish list, but they need this vital yet curiously reluctant witness — and he feels guilty about his slack-assed approach to the impending trial.
It’s age. He just can’t get the steam up the way he did when young. Or is it something else? Is his brain frozen by fear of failure? That last effort, about mining rights, had shown him at his fumbling worst; he’d had no idea what anyone, including himself, was talking about.
A slightly quivering need, a sexual tension, also beguiles him. He gets this way after several weeks of missing Margaret, and he’s not been with her since the Christmas holidays. He’s hoping hard mental work will burn the need off.
He is not far up Centre Road, almost at the lumberyard, when an old VW van pulls over, another neighbour, with four romping kids in back. She explains she picked them up early from school, not trusting the school bus. Many other parents were doing the same.
“Where’s Tigger?” an eight-year-old asks.
“I love Tigger,” says her little brother.
Their mother explains: “That’s what the kids in school have taken to calling the mountain lion.”
The young of Garibaldi have obviously been reared on A.A. Milne, or else inundated by the Disney version. Arthur hopes this will not build into a Garibaldi meme. He thanks her for her ride offer and sends her on her way.
He wonders if Jeremiah’s ghost will show up. In pioneer days there were cougars and wolves here, and all manner of lesser predators. It would not have been easy keeping sheep or fowl or even horses. Maybe the effort, the losses suffered, drove Jeremiah to drink, and his demise wasn’t due to a drunken fall, but suicide.
The third offer comes from Baldy Johansson, who has just pulled out of the lumberyard in his rusty long-bed pickup. He is hauling tall posts and spools of barbed wire, presumably to fence his shack from the cougar.
He wants to tell Arthur all about the lion, in case he hadn’t heard. His neighbour’s cat, Fluffy, has been added to the victims list as a probable. All owners of pets are being warned to keep them indoors. They’re saying the cougar may have rabies.
Arthur’s earlier robust confidence about his safety has waned under this bombardment. But he hefts his stick and carries on, though more warily now, as the road curls steeply into heavy forest.
6
It is with a sense of relief that Arthur makes it to Hopeless Bay without having seen Tigger the cougar or, for that matter, Jeremiah Blunder. Arthur doesn’t plan to tarry — he hopes to pick up Professor Chernikoff’s analysis of the necessity defence, buy some groceries, a writing pad, and some pens and pencils, and get home and start reading and analyzing and understanding. And in the effort, suppress the wriggling discomfort he’s been feeling, the roiling of testicles distracting him from the intricacies of admissible evidence.
The Fluffy leaflet has been removed from the outdoor bulletin board, along with, one assumes, all hopes for the cat’s survival. Newly posted is a sheet headed Cougar Warning! — multiple exclamation marks and a number to call if anyone makes a sighting. Locals are advised not to venture to the north end! Children should be kept indoors! Gwendolyn Park is closed to the public!
Arthur turns to see Norman Forbish’s all-terrain vehicle rumble toward him — the newshound drives it out of necessity not choice: no ordinary car can accommodate his bulk. He claims that he’s dieting and is down to three hundred and thirty pounds.
As the ATV pulls up, Art
hur sees it’s laden with several hundred copies of the Bleat, which is published — or at least mailed — every other Wednesday. Though often Thursday, even Friday. But today Forbish has made deadline.
“Anxious times,” Arthur says, helping him unload the twined bundles. “A lot of the fear is irrational, but I worry about those young people up at Bleak Creek.” Six couples, three toddlers, in a tiny community next to Gwendolyn Park. They bought there last year: seven organic acres, a rambling old house with two old cabins and a new tepee. A commune of city-bred naïfs, struggling through their second winter here. They’re off the grid, powerless except for a few solar panels. No cars but several bicycles. They mostly hitchhike.
Forbish stares at Arthur, not getting his drift. “So why should we worry about them? They aren’t as poor as they look. I was up there in summer, doing a feature. Where they come from, in Tennessee, the local businesses started a crowd-funding campaign to get them out of town, they were ruining the tourist business. They bought the old Gillespie place for a song, and have got lots left over.”
“Why I worry is they have preschool kids. Are their parents watching them or are they doing . . . whatever they do. Drugs, I suppose.”
“So what? So they let the kids play outside, it’s healthy, all the fresh air. They’re all running around naked, kids, adults. They’re hippies. I don’t judge their lifestyle, they don’t judge mine.”
“Nelson, where have you been for the last three days?”
“Putting this here edition to bed.”
Arthur checks the Bleat’s headline: “Local dog busted for alpacacide.” A photo of Shannon.
“Have you not heard about the cougar?”
“What cougar?”
Save it for Facebook, I don’t do animal stories. That now becomes ironic. Forbish has trouble grasping the essence of the Cougar Warning! leaflet. He blinks, and the words remain. He turns red. He’s a proud man, and Arthur feels sorry for him.
Stung Page 24